


never not worked

by AppleSun



Category: The Brave (TV 2017)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Drabble, Gen, I'm Bad At Tagging, Interrogation, Like really really really squint, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, amir as a badass cia operative, amir does blow a guys head off so, amirxmcg if you squint, bad language, idk what else to tag, kind of??, the team swears a bit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-22 13:47:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15583308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AppleSun/pseuds/AppleSun
Summary: Amir interrogates a possible informant. The team don't particularly appreciate his methods.





	never not worked

**Author's Note:**

> hi!!! so this is my first ever fanfiction on ao3, and the first time ive ever written for the brave. i decided to write this story because amir is my favourite character and i find him seriously interesting, plus i really miss the brave (i still cant believe they cancelled it). i honestly dont know how i feel about this, im not exactly proud of it but i dont hate it either, so i decided to post it anyways, just in case even a single person likes it. for me, it just didnt capture the mystery and enigma that amir is, so im not too pleased. all the same, i hope you enjoy!
> 
> (also this hasn't been beta'd so all mistakes are mine)

McG sighed frustratedly, running his hand through his hair. “Top, this is useless, we’re getting nothing.”  


Dalton glanced over his shoulder at the man sitting cuffed at the metal table behind him. His name was Petrov Sergeyevich, and he was a Russian ex-KGB operative that was a big player in the black market, dealing mostly in arms. The team had been interrogating him for over four hours now, trying to find out the location of one of Sergeyevich’s clients, but Sergeyevich wasn’t cracking.  


“What do we do now?” Jaz asked, looking tired. They all were, McG supposed, having spent the past 16 hours trying to locate and capture Sergeyevich only to be told they needed to interrogate him themselves in order to find the location of their actual target. “We can’t use physical torture, we all know that wouldn’t work,”  


“Not with his KGB background,” Preach agreed. “Plus, it would take far too long and we wouldn’t be able to grab Stilinovic in time,”  


“We’ve probably lost him already,” Jaz grumbled, crossing her arms.  


“We don’t know that for sure.” Dalton disagreed, although McG knew he knew it was most probably true. Dario Stilinovic, Sergeyevich’s client that they were after, had most likely realised by now that his dealer seemed to have gone missing and had almost certainly disappeared already.  


“Whatever you say, Top,” McG rubbed his hand over his face tiredly, watching Sergeyevich out of the corner his eye even though he knew Amir had it covered, sitting across the table from Sergeyevich with gun in hand, prepared to pull the trigger if the Russian so much as twitched wrong. McG couldn’t help but feel annoyed, even though he knew there was nothing much they could do. Dario Stilinovic killed hundreds and hundreds, possibly even thousands, of innocent people every year and the only thing stopping McG from getting to him was Sergeyevich, a stubborn bastard of a man who thought he was so big and important in the black market world that he wouldn’t make a compromise with the goddamn DIA when they were waving a loaded gun in his face. And that was part of the problem, of course. They had almost nothing on him, no leverage, no blackmail. They could threaten him with death, obviously, but Sergeyevich didn’t seem to care. In fact, in some of his retorts he had seemed almost welcoming of it.  


McG noticed Amir get up quietly from his seat in front of Sergeyevich and join their little huddle of pissed off operatives in the corner of the almost empty room. Despite the long hours of hunting and capturing the Russian and not a moment of rest, Amir looked almost completely unaffected by the past two sleepless nights, eyes sharp and alert and an aware posture. The only thing that might reveal Amir was even the slightest bit tired were the rings around his eyes, growing darker with every passing hour.  


“I can try to talk to him,” Amir suggested, and Dalton frowned.  


“What do you mean? How?” He asked, leaning against the wall and keeping his eyes focused on Sergeyevich, who now wasn’t being as closely guarded as McG assumed Top would like.  


“Just give me a second,” Amir left the room for only a moment, before re-entering with a plain brown file that didn’t seem to be particularly thick. McG didn’t recognize it, and he wondered where Amir had gotten it from.  


“What’s that?” Jaz asked, trying to snatch the file from Amir’s hand.  


Amir didn’t let her, holding it far enough away that the length of her arm couldn’t reach it. “Information,” he said, like that explained everything. “Can I have a talk with Sergeyevich? It’s worth a go, right?”  


Dalton rubbed his neck, eyebrows creased. “You aren’t gonna give us anything more than ‘information’?”  


Amir shrugged. “You might as well just as watch, right?”  


“I suppose,” Top exhaled deeply before nodding, although McG could tell he wasn’t happy with Amir shrouding this file of ‘information’ in such mystery. “Go ahead, Amir.”  


Amir gave a curt nod before heading to sit down across from Sergeyevich once again, this time with a more determined glint in his eyes.  


“I don’t like this,” Jaz whispered, fixing her eyes on Amir.  


“You got a better idea?” Preach retorted, although he too looked rather concerned.  


McG turned his eyes towards Amir and Sergeyevich, who seemed to be trying to stare each-other down. Amir’s posture was loose and relaxed, but his face had been wiped of any emotion, eyes stony-cold and dark. Empty. It scared McG when he did this, when he slipped into a persona so unlike Amir that McG felt sure he was a completely different person. Amir could fit himself into identities so quickly and easily it was like pulling on a coat. He would hold himself differently, stance changing and eyes going completely dead and unfeeling, and, yeah, it was terrifying.  


Amir pushed the file into the center of the table, opening it slowly. He pulled a piece of paper from the neat pile and leant back, eyes scanning the words almost boredly. “Petrov Sergeyevich. Or, if we’re calling you by your real name, Yasha Artemovich. Born on the twelfth of August, 1971, forty-seven years old, grew up in Moscow. Only child, never knew your father, mother died when you were sixteen.” For the first time, Amir looked up from the file, giving Sergeyevich ( _or was it Artemovich now?_ ) a sympathetic nod. “Sorry about the cancer, must have been rough.”  


McG felt himself becoming more and more unsettled. How did Amir know all of this? Patricia certainly hadn’t, she would’ve told them about the fake name, at least. So where the _hell_ was Amir getting all this information?  


“You don’t know shit,” Sergeyevich growled in his thick Russian accent, but his previously defiant expression was clouded by uncertainty, and he looked as confused as McG felt.  


“Started your career in the black market at the age of twenty-two…” Amir trailed off, nodding like he was impressed. McG assumed he was faking. “You must be pretty good to have Nikolai Yegorovna recruit you.”  


The name ‘Nikolai Yegorovna’ rung a bell somewhere in the back of McG’s head, but he couldn’t remember where from. Beside him, Dalton inhaled sharply, so McG assumed that unlike himself, Top actually recognized the name and understood who this ‘Nikolai’ man was.  


“Go fuck yourself,” Sergeyevich snarled, glaring at Amir.  


Amir sighed, placing the paper back into the file. “Look, Yasha. Just tell us where Stilinovic is.”  


“I’m not telling you shit, American.” Sergeyevich spat. McG ignored the urge to slam the Russian’s head into the metal table.  


Amir ignored him, leaning back in his chair casually as if he was on a coffee date. “You’re sort of two-faced, aren’t you? See, despite the fact you’re supposedly some big-shot arms dealer, I know there’s another side to you.” Amir leant forward slightly, eyes dark and never leaving Sergeyevich’s gaze. “A _family_ man.”  


Sergeyevich swallowed thickly, but didn’t reply. Amir pushed a few pictures in front of him, pointing at one of a pretty woman with dark hair in sunglasses, who was sitting in a car on the phone, obviously being unknowingly photographed. “Elena Artemovich, your wife. Lovely lady, you know, you’re a lucky man. She went to see a play at the theatre last night with her friend Maria. She thought it was rather good, especially the dialogue, but the acting was a bit unfeeling at times, especially with Constanzo’s character.”  


Sergeyevich was glaring at Amir, eyes so sharp with murderous rage McG almost went to blindfold him. “Leave her out of this.”  


Amir only hummed, tapping the next picture. This one was a photo of a teenage girl standing in a group of other kids that McG assumed were her friends or classmates. She was smiling brightly, school-books clutched in her arms. “Mashka Artemovich, sixteen years old, your daughter. Very smart girl, straight A-student, popular. Definitely a candidate for the student council next year, don’t you think?”  


“Don’t fucking talk about my daughter, you piece of shit.” Sergeyevich snarled, wrists pulling at his handcuffs violently.  


“She’s worried about her exams next week,” Amir seemed undeterred, continuing as if he’d never spoken. “Chemistry is her biggest concern, I believe. She just can’t seem to get a grip on those formulas.”  


Amir gestured at the third and last picture he had placed in front of Sergeyevich, an image of a young boy, maybe about nine years old maximum, eating cereal from behind a window. “Kusya Artemovich, eight years old, your son. He made the soccer team yesterday, I don’t know if you heard. The whole family, minus you, of course, went out to celebrate last night. Kusya had a triple chocolate sundae, ate the whole thing without any help. He’s a bit upset because his best friend Deniska didn’t make the team, but there’s always next year.”  


Sergeyevich had stopped hurling out biting insults, instead settling for an ice-cold glare filled to the brim with pure hatred and loathe. His fists were clenched so tight McG could see the whites of knuckles from where he was standing. McG could tell; Sergeyevich was getting scared.  


Amir made a show of shuffling all the papers and photographs back neatly into the file, acting as though he didn’t notice the paralyzing death-glare Sergeyevich was sending him. Maybe he didn’t. Amir leant back on his chair, stretching his limbs. He did nothing but gaze at Sergeyevich for a minute, dark eyes sweeping over the Russian as he seemed to file everything about Sergeyevich away into his head, remembering.  


“This is very simple, Yasha.” Amir spoke quietly, but his voice seemed to echo around the bare room. “You tell me what I want to know, and I’ll let your family live.”  


McG’s heart skipped a beat.  


Sergeyevich shook his head. “You lie. You don’t know where they are, my family is safe.”  


Amir laughed, the light, tinkling sound completely out of place. “You think we don’t know where they are? Honestly, Yasha, they told me you were one of the smart ones. Apparently not.” Amir fixed his eyes on Sergeyevich, the brown of his iris’ almost black. “Where do you think we got those pictures, Yasha? We didn’t _google_ them.”  


Sergeyevich growled, tugging at his handcuffs again. McG’s hand went down to his hip, fingers hovering just above the holster of his gun.  


“No, we know where you’re family is. They’re living in the west of Russia, a little village called Khitrov, 56 Selezniew Street. Beautiful place, the restaurant down the road does a wonderful beef stroganoff. Nice house too; five bedrooms, two living rooms, big garden, lots of space for the dog to run about in.”  


Sergeyevich had shut his eyes like he was going to be sick. “Don’t touch them.”  


“We won’t, not if you tell us where Stilinovic is.” Amir slipped his hand into his jacket’s pocket and pulled out a sleek black touchscreen phone that McG didn’t know he had. Neither did Top, apparently, judging by how he stiffened beside McG. Amir tapped the mobile once and the screen lit-up. McG couldn’t see it properly but guessing by how Sergeyevich’s face went slack with horror, he assumed it wasn’t good. “That’s my friend Clem right there, see what he’s holding? That’s an 'IWI US DAN', a state of the art sniper rifle.” Amir’s eyes flickered with a scathing admiration. “Range of over 1200 metres, it can shoot a bullet clean through someone’s skull, no mess.” He paused. “You don’t tell me where Stilinovic is, Clem shoots that same bullet through your wife and children’s head.”  


McG felt his blood run cold.  


Sergeyevich swallowed thickly, his skin pale and clammy. “You’re bluffing. That is not real.”  


“No?” Amir raised his eyebrows. “Wave to the camera please, Clem.”  


The masked figure on screen raised a hand, turning his head and staring right at the camera. Behind them, McG could see a large mansion, tall with stretching windows and grand double french doors, with three other people in the garden, all matching the pictures Amir had presented before; Sergeyevich’s wife sitting peacefully in the garden sipping tea, his two children kicking a football to each-other and giggling, completely unaware of the masked figure pointing a gun at their heads. It made McG feel sick, knowing that Amir was threatening to murder these innocent people just for the sake of the mission.  


“I don’t like this -” Jaz began, going to stop Amir, but Top grabbed her wrist.  


“Don’t, I wanna see where this is going.”  


“No, is not true.” Sergeyevich was raising his voice now, and he gestured violently at McG and the rest of the team, fiery with anger and fear. “You are American military, American military would never -”  


“Oh, I’m sorry,” Amir gave a huff of genuine amusement, eyes twinkling with sardonic humour. “You thought _I_ was American military?”  


“No, I know what you are,” Sergeyevich said, voice barely above a whisper. “You are _CIA_.”  


He hissed the word ‘CIA’ like it was the work of the devil, like it was the worst possible insult anyone could come up with, like it was evil. McG almost shuddered, but Amir seemed undeterred.  


“There you go,” he said quietly, almost gentle. “So you know what I am, you also know I’m not lying. I _will_ kill your family. But I don’t have to. Just tell me where Stilinovic is, they can live.”  


There was a strained silence for a few minutes, the tension so thick you could cut it with a knife. Amir never once lifted his gaze from Sergeyevich, his piercing eyes boring into the Russian like he was trying to pull the information from Sergeyevich’s mind through his eyes.  


“He’s in Zagreb,” Sergeyevich finally relented, sounding exhausted. “I don’t know exactly where, but he’s in Zagreb. He’s doing some deal with Barta Marcell, but I don’t know where or when, I swear. Don’t hurt my family, I’m telling the truth.”  


“I believe you,” Amir stated calmly, nodding soothingly. “We won’t touch your family. Thank you.”  


Before McG knew what was happening, Amir was holding a gun to Sergeyevich’s head and pulling the trigger, and McG couldn’t help but look away as crimson blood was sprayed all over the wall, contrast against the stark white paint, the Russian slumping, dead, against the chair. Amir swiftly holstered his pistol and got up from the chair, grabbing the file from the table. He was unnaturally, disturbingly, even, calm, as though he hadn’t just murdered a man point-blank in cold blood. McG felt queasy.  


“What the _hell_ did you do that for?” Jaz was the first to recover, staring at Amir in an angry horror.  


Amir gave her a flat look, like he didn’t understand why she was protesting. “He gave us the information, he’s no longer an asset. I got rid of him.”  


“Amir, he was _unarmed_ , he did what you asked, you said you would let him live. What the hell are we supposed to do with the body? There was no need to kill him, you said you would let him live.” Dalton argued, raising his voice in a way McG had never seen him do with Amir before.  


“No,” Amir disagreed, shaking his head. “I said I would let his _family_ live, I never said anything about letting _him_ go. I would never do that. Not after some of the things he's done. And don’t worry about the body - this is a CIA safehouse, I’ll just call clean-up.”  


“How did you know all that stuff?” Preach asked, as tranquil as usual, even though he looked rather ruffled. “That file, those pictures, all that personal information. Where is it from?”  


Amir glanced down at the file in his hand. “A friend looked into it for me. It might not surprise you - the CIA does have a few more resources than the DIA.”  


“Why didn’t you say before?” McG demanded, speaking up for the first time. “It might’ve been useful four hours ago, you know.”  


“He needed to stew a bit, before all that would work. If I’d said it then, it would’ve been jumping the gun. Besides, I needed to get a proper read on him, see if it’d actually work.” Amir said.  


“Amir, you threatened his _family_. His unaware, _innocent_ family, you had a gun pointed at their fucking heads! How do you think that’s acceptable?” Jaz exploded, hands shaking with anger.  


Amir didn’t seem at all affected by her anger. “It worked, didn’t it?”  


“What if it hadn't?” McG snarled, tired of whatever screwed up game Amir was playing. “What if he’d gone ‘ _go ahead, blow their heads off, I don’t give a shit_ ’, what then? Would you have done it? Gotten that Clem guy to murder innocent fucking people in their own home?” McG took a deep breath, calming himself. “What if it hadn’t worked, Amir?”  


“I don’t know.” Amir only shrugged. “It’s never _not_ worked.”  


And with that, he stalked out the room, leaving McG and the rest of the team in a room covered in blood, with only a corpse and a whole lot of questions to keep them company.

**Author's Note:**

> so i hope you liked! i would really appreciate some constructive criticism or even some kudos lmao


End file.
